Jason Swartz of Alliance Talent Discusses Artists Monetizing Facebook

The business of earning money as an artist is becoming more and more complex as social media continues its rise as the de facto way for musicians to connect with their audience. To try to get an insight regarding how to monetize the largest social network – Facebook – we spoke with Jason Swartz, CEO of Alliance Talent, who has helped stars like 2 Chainz, Lil Jon, and Ludacris earn anywhere from $150 to $500K a year in passive income.

AA: What percentage of musicians do you think are monetizing Facebook correctly?

Jason: When looking at the total world of musicians with 1 million or more followers on Facebook, I would say less than 5-10%, most because many don’t understand it, don’t know about it, or haven’t taken advantage of it.

What new opportunities do you see in the near future for musicians with Facebook monetization?

Monetizing Facebook continues to evolve. Originally, people only did brand endorsement, then my company Alliance Talent scaled the opportunity of making musicians money by sharing trending news stories via links. Now we’ve expended to opportunities to monetize the sharing of trending videos that are watched within Facebook, which is going to be huge as well as the opportunity for what we call BOOST POSTING which is a specialized method of creating Facebook passive income by way of targeting NON fans of musicians that have similar demographic and personal interests as their existing fans

How could musicians use Facebook Live for monetization?

As of now there is no set program for using Facebook Live, but of course doing endorsement deals within the LIVE feed would allow them to get paid. In the near future there will be rollover and links on the cover of the feed that will allow users to link to or click to offers, and opportunities that will allow further monetization with Facebook Live

What 3 tips would you give a musician who would like to monetize via Facebook more successfully?

Consult a professional that knows the business. There are a lot of people and companies that claim to understand monetization, but its a very specific process to ensure their brand is protected and that they can get the best available content to generate the most revenue per post. Post more than you think you should. Facebook’s algorithm is structured to allow more content to be seen by fans who want it. If fans click, share, or like posts they will slowly but surely get more content in their feeds from the page as currently, Facebook limits the reach to a page’s fan to 2-3%. Also make sure to use a diverse bed of content – that means text comments, links, video, and shares. Facebook sometimes limits what content a fan sees from a page based on what content they like to engage with. That said, it’s important to diversify the feed so you hit each possible option and again have a better chance to reach fans.

So as you can see, artists can always be doing more when it comes to generating revenue via social channels and are finding great representation to help them do that through people like Jason.